11 ideas from UC Berkeley Haas that changed American business

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, we’re celebrating a few of the ideas born at UC Berkeley Haas that helped shape how American business actually works.

UC Berkeley Haas was not built to teach business as usual—it was built to question it. That spirit goes back to our founding: Launched with a gift from Cora Jane Flood in 1898, Haas is the only leading business school founded by a woman, the first founded at a public university, and the second in the U.S. 

Our founders carried a conviction we still hold today—that business is part of society, not apart from it, and that advanced business education should counter narrow commercialism with a broad, forward-looking, and ethical approach.

Even our Haas name, given to us by the Haas family, who turned Levi’s blue jeans into an iconic global business, is an ode to American innovation.

From day one, we’ve reimagined what business and business education could be. Here are some of the areas where that’s played out.

Two Nobel-winning breakthroughs that transformed how economists think.

Game Theory and Transaction Cost Economics—Developed here. Professor John C. Harsanyi (1994) showed how to model strategic decisions when players don’t know each other’s motives, laying the groundwork for modern game theory. Professor Oliver Williamson (2009) explained why companies form in the first place—to avoid the costs and risks of constant market transactions. The same rigor still defines how Haas faculty tackle the hardest problems in economics today.

Modern financial innovation

Built here—Professor Mark Rubinstein’s binomial options pricing model (1979) remains one of the industry’s most important valuation tools. Building on Professor Nils Hakansson’s 1976 “superfund” concept, Rubinstein, Hayne Leland, and John O’Brien launched the SuperTrust in the early 1990s, the first ETF in the U.S. And in 2001, Haas launched the first Master of Financial Engineering program at a business school, ranked first in the nation ever since.

The framework for how big companies stay innovative

Written here—Professor David Teece’s theory of dynamic capabilities changed how organizations think about R&D and competitive advantage. Professor Henry Chesbrough’s “Open Innovation” framework gave companies a new playbook for building breakthroughs with partners, not just in-house. The Institute for Business Innovation continues to pioneer innovation research and practice. 

The Institute for Business Innovation‘s Open Innovation Labs, UC Berkeley continues to pioneer innovation research and practice.

Responsible business, before it was a buzzword

Rooted here—in 1959, Dean Ewald (E.T.) Grether introduced one of the nation’s first courses on corporate social responsibility, and Dean Earl Cheit built on it. That throughline runs through today’s Institute for Business and Social Impact, Center for Responsible Business and our Center for Social Sector Leadership, now marking 20 years of training leaders to bring business rigor to society’s toughest challenges.

Modern brand strategy

Professor Emeritus David Aaker’s research on brand equity changed how companies think about earning trust, not just market share. His thinking came full circle at Haas, helping to inspire the school’s own brand strategy in 2025.

Women breaking the glass ceiling to lead the nation’s economic direction

Professor Emeritus Janet Yellen became the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve and the first woman to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary—as well as the only person in history to lead the Treasury, the Fed, and the Council of Economic Advisors. Laura D. Tyson, Professor of the Graduate School, also chaired the Council of Economic Advisors before returning to Haas as the first woman to serve as dean.

Behavioral economics

The first class combining psychology and economics was created at Berkeley in 1987 and Haas has been a center of the field ever since, from Professor Emeritus Barry Staw’s work on escalation of commitment to Professor Ulrike Malmendier’s research on how life experiences shape economic behavior. As director of The O’Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics, Malmendier is continuing to push the envelope by integrating the life sciences into the field. 

A science for measuring company culture

Developed here—Professor (and now Dean) Jennifer Chatman, created the Organizational Culture Profile in the early 1990s with Charles O’Reilly and David Caldwell, giving leaders a rigorous way to quantify culture —still a standard tool for guiding reorganizations, M&A integration, and hiring today. The Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture & Innovation is now a national hub for culture research

Real estate research that shapes policy

Rooted here—the late Professor Dwight Jaffee, with Professor Nancy Wallace and Christopher Downing, were first to document banks’ and Freddie Mac’s practice of cherry-picking riskier mortgage pools for securitization ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, pressuring Freddie Mac into greater disclosure. More recently, Adair Morse, and Richard Stanton were the first to merge large-scale lending data with borrower race and ethnicity, finding that both online and in-person lenders were charging Black and Latino borrowers higher rates. Rigorous research continues through the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics.

Crowdfunding as we know it

Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell, both MBA 08, launched Indiegogo out of a Haas classroom and navigated unchartered regulatory waters to take crowdfunding mainstream, opening startup funding to everyday people. Kickstarter and GoFundMe followed soon after.

Business for a changing planet

Advanced here—our Energy Institute at Haas is a leading center for energy economics research, and programs like the Strauch Cleantech to Market Program pair students with entrepreneurs to bring climate technology to market. Faculty continue to push sustainability further by building frameworks for low-carbon investing and training the next generation of leaders though programs like the Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative and the dual MBA/Master of Climate Solutions Program. 

Two hundred fifty years of American enterprise. We’ve spent 128 of those moving business forward—and we’re just getting started!